by Baen Books
i.
Lalira Revyne felt a rising elation. I faced my fear. I freed the little thing, even though I was afraid of it. And I fought off a gigantic spinesnarl to do it! Mom will have to listen now!
The relief—not just of having triumphed over danger, but over herself—buoyed her up, and she found herself skipping down the path. Steam drifted around her as she passed near the Burning Waters; the pathway here was more heavily marked and, she was pretty sure, enchanted to keep it safe. Even so, it was even warmer than normal here, with bubbling and hissing sounds surrounding her on all sides. Just a little farther…
The greenery of the Forest Sea rose about her again, and she quickened her pace. The numbness of the spinesnarl scratches had faded, and she rounded the final curve.
The house her mother had built shone white and blue in the lowering sunlight of the clearing. But as Lalira Revyne started to run forward, something told the fourteen- year-old girl caution!
At first she couldn’t figure out what it was. The jungle sounds were normal, the faint scuttling of forest animals, the drowsy hum of insects, the occasional call of bird or least-dragon. The gardens were undisturbed. The house sat in the middle of the clearing, as it always had, surrounded by its warded fence—
The fence. The Wanderer had once said “it is the detail that matters, the single anomaly amidst the ordinary, that is the clue.”
The gate was open. Looking carefully, so was the door of the house. Mom never left the gate open—that left a gap in the verminwards for all sorts of pests to get in. And leaving both that and the house door open? Never.
Her forest knife seemed suddenly tiny and inadequate. She had no idea what she was facing. But none of the Heroes know when they start, either, she reminded herself. Can’t be so scared for Mom that I rush in.
The Forest Sea was filled with unknown danger. She had been raised with that knowledge, but living so near it for so long, with the wards keeping them safe… she’d forgotten. Now she had to be careful. Maybe Mom was fine, maybe Lalira was panicking over nothing… but being careful wouldn’t hurt.
Not going in by the regular path. Lalira tied her night-black hair back, then eased off the path, circling the clearing—and keeping an eye on the Forest Sea, just in case—until she was about a quarter way around. Then she vaulted over the fence, the verminwards stinging slightly, and—
—snagged her left foot on the topmost post. Her hands flew wide, the forest knife sparkling high in the sun and coming down somewhere out of sight, as Lalira fell splat into the soft, dark earth behind the thick tangle of pod vines.
“WHOOF!” she grunted, the impact driving the breath from her. Oh, Chromaias, that was brilliant, Lalira! Such stealth and grace! You might as well have charged straight in!
But still, maybe she hadn’t been heard. Or seen. Maybe. And maybe she could recover her weapon without being seen. She crawled as carefully as she could between the rows, looking, until she finally found her knife, standing half-embedded in the ground. Small as it was, she still felt better with the polished hilt in her hand.
Check the house. The vines obscured any view of her from the house, but she could peer between them.
Nothing obvious. Can’t see inside. Unfortunately she had no seeing-glass, no scrying magic, and not really much magic at all. A few simple homekeeping spells like cleaning, spicing food, and such, that she knew how to cast, a verminwand in her pack, the forest knife… that was it.
“ ‘Waiting doesn’t get us farther along!’ ” she murmured, quoting the great warrior Tarl Tarlsson. “Right.”
She figured staying low was the best choice, so she crawled slowly towards the house. Nothing happened, so she sprinted the last few steps to it, shoving the door wide and crouched in a combat stance with the knife held out.
Silence. Her mother wasn’t visible in the front room, even though all her notes were spread—
—all over the floor. The big hardwood desk was shoved askew, the chairs knocked to the floor, a scorchmark—flare spell? shock bolt?—on the near wall, and one of the cabinets was shattered, as though something very heavy had fallen or been thrown into it.
Mommy’s gone? What happened? It was obvious Mom had fought—and fought hard. Lalira found herself unable to move, frozen with horror. What can I do? What? There’s no one around here, nowhere I can go. Who could help me?
And in that moment she saw the answer. Across the room the books’s spines shone in the setting sunlight: Darkwood Tales, Singer of Names, Legends of the Wanderer, Silverstar, Beneath the City, Three Against Shadows, dozens more. You are the only one who can help yourself, her conscience reminded her coldly, with both encouragement and guilt beneath the chill. This was what you told your mother you wanted, to make your name in the books, to follow that path. That path lies before you now. Walk it, or go hide in your room waiting for help that cannot come. For you know the only place that could offer help is the one place you cannot go.
That last was so true she could not argue. Think. Mother’s only chance is if I think. That’s what all the stories tell me. Even the least-smart heroes have to stop and consider.
Her hands were shaking, but she was able to move finally. Turning, thinking, looking, trying to keep panic at bay, the thought of her mother hurt or…or worse had to be kept out of her head.
The desk. Sitting on the desk was the recorder, a beautiful crystal and metal foldable sculpture which was also one of her mother’s best tools. The recorder was out! Maybe it recorded what happened!
Lalira pulled up one of the chairs, sat down, and touched the device’s right side.
Her mother—dark-brown haired, skin slightly darker, smiled out of the air before her, relaxing in the same chair Lalira was sitting in. “Notes for seven-fifteen, year of Arlavala, Cycle Seven Hundred Six. Work progressing pretty much the same as last week. Negotiations with Pondsparkle are going well; if I don’t make some terrible mistake they’ll probably be willing to help in the next excavation.” Mom seemed to glance out the window. “Lalira’s getting restless. She really seems serious about this Adventurer business, but I don’t know if she really understands what it will mean; I’ve tried to tell her but I just don’t know. And her problem with the Toads…” She shook her head. “I hope I made the right decisions. I can’t keep her home forever, but—”
From out of sight came a knocking sound. Her mother glanced up. “Come in!”
Sounds of the door opening and someone—or something—coming in. Mom stood up suddenly. “Oh, no,” she said quietly, with what sounded like a resigned tone in her voice, her fingers absently making the simple cutoff gesture.
“Hells,” Lalira cursed. “Why couldn’t you have left it on, Mom?” But she knew the answer; Mom made a habit of shutting it off whenever she left the desk.
“Stop wishing for what isn’t,” she answered herself, quoting Willowind Forestfist. “Instead, look to understand what is.” The quotes, the thoughts of other heroes, comforted her, let her pretend to be one of them instead of a terrified fourteen-year-old girl.
Search for clues. Whoever did this, they came in the door. Mom fought them. I see smears of dirt from outside—from feet or boots I can’t tell, it’s just wide and spread everywhere.
The dirt gave her an idea; the soil was always damp, and the smears showed at least one of the invaders had stepped in it.
She went to the door, looking down, and almost instantly she saw the footprint.
A huge, webbed footprint.
The footprint of a Toad.
ii.
Lalira became aware that she had been standing there, trembling with terror and fury, for long, long minutes; the sun had set, darkness was starting to settle over the Forest Sea.
I even helped one of them! I fought myself and helped that little Toad out of the spinesnarl!
The anger at the betrayal—that she had managed to overcome her unreasoning fear of the bulging-eyed, wide-mouthed creatures, and now found there was reason to fear and
hate them—galvanized her to action. Cold reason and focus will guide you to justice and vengeance, she remembered from Three Against Shadows.
Kneeling by the print, she touched the earth. Not merely damp, but still crumbling spontaneously around the edge. Very fresh. They might have been here the same time she was rescuing their miniature relative. No blood, or not much. No body. They took Mom, but they didn’t kill her. I’ve got a chance to rescue her!
She forced herself to stop two strides down the path. “No,” she said. “Even a spinesnarl cut me a little while ago. I can’t go after things that can move around like Toads without defenses.”
There was really only one possible place to look. Her mother hadn’t let her get armor or real weapons yet, and Mom’s must have been on her—or the Toads had taken them as a precaution.
But Dad’s old equipment might still be here.
Her father had been lost years ago—probably, Lalira admitted to herself, one of the reasons Mom didn’t want her daughter following the Adventurer’s path, even if she went to the Academy first. His best stuff had disappeared with him. But the trunk was still there, in her mother’s room, under the bed.
It was locked. And she knew her mother had the only key.
“Hells and Hells again!” She kicked the steel-bound wood. This proved futile, and she spent the next minute hopping around the room cursing at the agony in her toe before she decided it wasn’t quite broken after all.
“Okay, Lalira, think!” she said. “Mithras Silverstar wouldn’t let this stop her.”
Mithras was, however, favored of Terian, so that gave her a bit of an advantage Lalira lacked. “Got to get this open.”
She smacked her forehead. “Stupid!”
The forest knife was long and keen, slightly enchanted. She forced it into the narrow crack that separated the top of the chest from the bottom. The lock’s the weak point; the hinges are thick and strong and there’s no way I’m taking them off.
She worked the blade down until it stopped, presumably against the catch of the lock, then started wriggling and prying. Come on, come on! She strained upward, pulling, levering—
SNAP!
For an instant she felt rising triumph—and then she realized that it had not been the lock, but her blade snapping.
“Gods, no!” She barely restrained another kick of sheer disbelif. The knife was enchanted. How could the lock have …
“Must be a magical seal,” a little voice said from behind her.
Lalira whirled, the stump of the forestknife held out, pointing with shaking fury and fear at…
A small Toad, sitting on the windowsill.
As soon as that registered, she lunged. “Monsters! Traitors! Where’s my mommy?!”
“Hey! Whoa! Aaaaaa!” the little Toad said, the last a tiny scream as he plummeted off the second floor windowsill.
Lalira stuck her head out, to see the small animal shaking off the dirt into which it had fallen. “What’s wrong with you?” it demanded, pointing up.
“You! You took my mommy! I mean, not you, but ...you! Them!”
It tilted its head, which was close to tilting most of its body. “I don’t know what you mean! You rescued me, and now I come to say thank-you and you start hacky-slashy on me!”
Lying little thing, Lalira thought. She was sure it had been spying on her, watching what she did now that she’d gotten home.
But the inner voice answered calmly, Then why did it speak at all? Why call attention to itself?
Slowly she lowered the broken blade. “You…don’t know what happened?”
“No,” the little Toad said. “I got here a few minutes ago and heard noises coming from that room, so I climbed up to see if it was you.”
Even a monster can be an ally, if you treat it as one, Cillerion Somari’s imagined voice reminded her.
Lalira forced herself to put the knife down. “Then…I’m sorry. I…my mother is gone. It looks… like Toads took her.”
“What?” There was no mistaking the disbelief in the creature’s voice.
“Look at the entrance! Look in my house, then you tell me!” She knew that she wasn’t sounding apologetic, but…
“Okay, okay, don’t bounce on my head. I’ll look. You still need to get that chest open?”
She looked over her shoulder. “Yes… but if that’s a warded lock—”
“—then the weak point is the rest of the chest,” the little Toad said. “Try an axe, unless the stuff inside’s fragile.”
She found herself staring openmouthed after the creature for a few seconds before she recovered. “How stupid can I be?” she asked herself. “No, I don’t want to answer that.”
The chopping axe was in the lean-to outside the main house. She ran downstairs and out the back door, grabbed it, and pelted up the stairs—snagging her right foot on the steps. The axe flew gracefully into the air, spinning with the slow deliberation of a falling tree in her fear-heightened perceptions as she smacked into the stairs, and it finished a second full rotation as the blade thunked down bare inches in front of her face.
Lalira waited for her heart to slow and the throbbing ache of her face where it had hit the stairs faded slightly. Then—much more carefully—she yanked the axe out of the wood and finished going upstairs. You’ve just started growing again. You’re clumsy because of that. Remember!
She swung the axe up and aimed for the wooden sections between the iron bindings. If the chest itself were enchanted, well…
But it wasn’t, and the shining blade bit deep. Another stroke and another, and suddenly she was through. A glint of blued steel was visible.
“You’re right,” said the subdued voice of the small Toad.
She managed not to jump, but the next stroke of the axe bounced uselessly from one of the iron straps. “About…?” she asked, then almost wanted to slap herself for the inane question.
“Toads. I don’t understand why, but you read the tracks right. Four, five big Toads came, dragged her off—after a fight.”
“I… see.” She finished chopping, getting herself under control; finally the shattered top broke off.
She lost no time getting into the shimmering chain shirt with the bridge-and-sword worked into the chest and the long, long arms with the clever slap-and-catch arrangement on the sleeves, the one Father had shown her, and her mother had let her practice with since she had been very small. It was still awfully large on her and, until she managed to get the sleeves to catch properly, they brushed the floor. The helm was way too big and she had to find cloth she could pad it with, but when she was done it at least sat on her head well. The Crystal Breath was there, with the glittering blue-violet of the Vor-nahal in the center; it fit snugly around her throat.
The weapons and the other pieces of armor… She shook her head. She could manage the combat-dance well enough, but Father’s weapons were too heavy and she couldn’t fit the other pieces at all. As it was…
The grunting cheeping noise was suddenly, obviously laughter. “Will you stop that!”
The little Toad tried, but still swelled like it was going to explode. “You… look like—”
“Don’t even, you… hey, what’s your name?”
The question at least distracted the Toad. “What? Oh, I’m Mudswimmer. No choice-name yet.”
Giving a name to the Toad made him, somehow, marginally less frightening. And he was awfully small. “Okay. I’m Lalira Revyne.”
“I know. Everyone knows about your mom and you in Pondsparkle.”
She didn’t even want to think about Pondsparkle. Instead, she remembered Tarl Tarlsson’s famous quote about preparing for battle against uncounted legions of evil: “Uncounted? In that case, have lunch now, then go conquer evil; this could take all day.”
She looked at Mudswimmer as he followed, finding it a little easier to look at him. “I have to grab something to eat quick, and some other supplies, then figure out where I’m going.” He bounced his understanding and followed he
r into the kitchen. “So… you have no idea why a bunch of Toads would come take my mom?”
“No, not a…” Mudswimmer froze. “Oh. She was digging in the fallen ruins. And…”
“And? Don’t stop!”
“There’s been a rumor of a few of us that don’t follow Blackwart the Great, but one of the Demons. The Demon of Water, Balgoltha.”
iii.
Her head hurt and her eyes were closed and she felt dizzy, shaky, and someone was asking her if she was all right. She opened her eyes slowly.
A huge wide-mouthed face loomed over her. She screamed in horror and rolled feebly away, into a rack of pots and pans that cascaded down on her with multiple echoing crashes, one bouncing off the helmet and almost hitting Mudswimmer, who ducked and then hid underneath the largest pot, peering out warily.
What… oh. I must have fainted? Embarrassment warred with confusion. Then slowly memory rose back, and she knew what horror had felled her, and she was no longer embarrassed. She wanted to curl into a tiny ball and hide, wait until the memory went away.
But her mother was still gone, and her heroes would not lie on the kitchen floor hiding. Lalira was still sick and frightened, but she forced herself to sit up, ignoring the dizziness that assailed her. “Sorry, Mudswimmer,” she said quietly, then managed to get to her feet. “It was… that name.”
She remembered the water coalescing before her, rising upward in a black mass, opening great, bulging eyes and smiling a horrific, hungry smile wide enough to swallow the world, and she swayed, catching hold of the edge of the table.
“You…met him, then.” Mudswimmer’s voice held shock and dawning understanding. “In the form he takes in fresh waters. That’s why…”
“Yes,” she forced out. “That’s why. Father…we weren’t alone. Father, Mother, and their friends saved me, drove him back, but it almost…”
“Your mother and father had some…impressive friends,” he said with awe. “Then you know enough. Most of us wouldn’t do anything like that, but any creatures that can choose…”